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Photographs above (all photographs taken by me.)
Derbyshire Peak District
1. View from road
leading to Winnats Pass, Castleton
2. View of Mam Tor, near Castleton
3, 4, 5. Views from Edale-Hope road
See also my page which includes (in the second and third columns) material on cross country skiing. An extract from the page:
Supplementary images: from South Yorkshire,
not Derbyshire
5. View through window
of my main workshop
6. Another view through the window
7. View from
upper window of part of the small back garden (previously, backyard.).
These views from windows are of scenes which would be
unremarkable in countries which have low temperatures and heavy snowfall in
winter. Here, scenes like this are very rare and well worth recording, I
think.
Other Derbyshire photographs
Above, Winnats Pass, Peak District
Above, photograph taken by me, showing the road which leads to
Winnats Pass and through the pass. Limestone visible everywhere, in outcrops
in the pass and in the dry stone walls, which contain Carboniferous fossils,
such as fossils of crinoid lilies. A substantial part of the area is a
designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI.) The geology of the
White Peak is very different from the geology of the Dark Peak, which
adjoins this area. The predominant rock of the Dark Peak is gritsone. At the
entrance to the pass, buildings of Speedwell Cavern, one of Castleton's four
show caves. The others are Peak Cavern, Blue John Cavern and Treak Cliff
Cavern.
Speedwell Cavern is
one of the four show
caves in Castleton, Derbyshire, England.[1]
From the Wikipedia entry on Speedwell Cavern:
'The cave system consists of a horizontal lead miners' adit (a level passageway driven horizontally into the hillside) 200 metres below ground leading to the cavern itself, a limestone cave. The narrow adit is permanently flooded, so after descending a long staircase, access to the cave is made by boat. At the end of the adit, the cavern opens up with fluorspar veits, stalactites and stalagmites, and the so-called "Bottomless Pit". This chamber has an underground lake with a 20 metres (66 ft) high waterfall and an extremely deep vertical shaf ...The original depth of the shaft has been estimated, from the amount of spoil placed in the shaft over the years, at around 150 metres (490 ft).[2]
The mine was developed in the 1770s but the limited lead ore deposits meant that it was not profitable and it was closed down by 1790.[3]
At the foot of Winnats Pass, it is a tourist attraction with an underground boat trip to the cavern ...
A connection was discovered in 2006 between the Speedwell Cavern system and Titan, the largest natural shaft in the UK, which is 141.5 metres (464 ft) high.
When visiting any lead-mining area (almost always, an area where lead mining took place in the past), as when visiting any mining area, such as a coal-mining area, reflection is called for, in my view - an appreciation of the back-breaking, dangerous work of the miners, which only became far less dangerous and not as harsh with the technological advances which transformed mining.
Above, photograph of area shown in Photograph 1, without snow cover, photograph taken by me
Above, the Blue John Cavern, Castleton. Blue John: a rare form of the mineral fluorite, mined only at the Blue John Cavern and the Treak Cliff Cavern, also in Castleton.
Above, bowl made of Blue John
Above, Derbyshire dry stone wall with stone containing Blue John
Above, minerals of mine. Left, fluorite from Treak Cliff Cavern, Castleton. Centre, fluorite with barite, galena and iron from Treak Cliff Cavern. Right, from outside the Peak District - dolomite and calcite, from the Harding vein, Carrock mine, Cumbria.
For the minerals of the Midlands, 'Minerals of the English Midlands' by Roy E. Starkey is a superb guide.
Above the Keep of Peveril Castle, high above Castleton. The Keep was begun c. 1176.
Above, Hope Cement Works, the largest in the UK. Hope, Derbyshire, is near to Castleton. The Peak District Mountain Rescue team is based at the cement works. The raw materials needed for the plant's operation are available nearby. I approve of the Cement Works - more exactly, I respect and admire the achievement, the construction, the day to day production of an essential building material. (Derbyshire building stone is a strong interest of mine too, as used in the construction of dry stone walls, vernacular architecture and larger architectural forms.)
Above, location of County of Derbyshire
